Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Worthless or discarded material or objects; refuse or rubbish.
  • noun A place or receptacle where rubbish is discarded.
  • noun Something considered worthless or of inferior quality, such as a piece of writing.
  • noun Disparaging, often abusive speech about a person or group.
  • noun A person or group of people regarded as worthless or contemptible.
  • noun Something broken off or removed to be discarded, especially plant trimmings.
  • noun The refuse of sugar cane after extraction of the juice.
  • transitive verb To throw away; discard.
  • transitive verb To damage or wreck, as by vandalism.
  • transitive verb To criticize severely or attack verbally.
  • transitive verb To remove twigs or branches from (a tree, for example).
  • transitive verb To cut off the outer leaves of (growing sugar cane).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To hold back by a leash, halter, or leaded collar, as a dog in pursuing game; hence, to retard; clog; encumber; hinder.
  • To free from superfluous twigs or branches; lop; crop: as, to trash trees.
  • noun Something broken, snapped, or lopped off; broken or torn bits, as twigs, splinters, rags, and the like. Compare cane-trash and trash-ice.
  • noun Hence, waste; refuse; rubbish; dross; that which is worthless or useless.
  • noun Money.
  • noun A low, worthless person. See white trash.
  • noun A low grade of tobacco-leaf. See white Burley tobacco.
  • To discard.
  • To remove the outer leaves from (growing cane). See cane-trash, 2.
  • To wear out; beat down; crush; harass; maltreat; jade.
  • To tramp and shuffle about.
  • noun A clog; anything fastened to a dog or other animal to keep it from ranging widely, straying, leaping fences, or the like.
  • noun Hence A clog or encumbrance, in a metaphorical sense.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To free from trash, or worthless matter; hence, to lop; to crop, as to trash the rattoons of sugar cane.
  • transitive verb obsolete To treat as trash, or worthless matter; hence, to spurn, humiliate, or crush.
  • transitive verb rare To hold back by a trash or leash, as a dog in pursuing game; hence, to retard, encumber, or restrain; to clog; to hinder vexatiously.
  • noun That which is worthless or useless; rubbish; refuse.
  • noun Especially, loppings and leaves of trees, bruised sugar cane, or the like.
  • noun rare A worthless person.
  • noun A collar, leash, or halter used to restrain a dog in pursuing game.
  • noun crumbled ice mixed with water.
  • intransitive verb rare To follow with violence and trampling.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Useless things to be discarded
  • noun A container into which things are discarded
  • noun Something of poor quality
  • noun slang, derogatory People of low social status or class. (See, for example, white trash.)
  • noun computing Temporary storage on disk for files that the user has deleted, allowing them to be recovered if necessary.
  • verb US To discard.
  • verb US To make into a mess.
  • verb US To beat soundly in a game.
  • verb US To disrespect someone or something

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun worthless material that is to be disposed of
  • verb dispose of (something useless or old)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably of Scandinavian origin; akin to Norwegian dialectal trask.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Perhaps from Old Norse tros ("rubbish, fallen leaves and twigs"). Compare Swedish trasa.

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